


Not Death (That A Man Should Fear)

by Jennistar



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, I'm so sorry, M/M, Mako is dead, POV Hermann Gottlieb, Raleigh is alive, Set just after Mako dies, because I say so dammit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 02:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennistar/pseuds/Jennistar
Summary: Just after the war, the survivors of the Shatterdome start an online chat to stay in touch. They don't use it for years. Until Mako dies. Featuring an angsty!Newmann phone call.





	Not Death (That A Man Should Fear)

Hermann watches the display in Sydney, though he told himself he wouldn't after that ridiculous presentation by Shao Industries just the day before. He is stubborn enough not to watch it in the break-out area with the rest of the lab staff and Jaeger tech though, and instead sits in his lab and fiddles with the hardware lying around until he's managed to rig up some semi-legal antenna that will give him a decent enough television picture.

So he is all alone when he watches Mako die.

At first Hermann doesn't quite understand what has happened – the cameras broadcasting the disaster are all over the place as they try to work out what's going on, so all he sees are flashes of a helicopter being hit and then Gypsy Avenger reaching out – desperately reaching – and then he recognises the helicopter and realisation hits him like a punch to his stomach. The helicopter spirals away, away from the Jaegar's outstretched fingers and safety, and Hermann doesn't have to watch to know the machine exploded on impact with the ground.

And just like that, another one of them is gone.

In the old days, the war days, it was always like that. You almost became desensitised to it, to the knowledge that whenever the pilots went out into battle it was all too likely they would not be coming back again. But this was ten years later and this was a simple press event, a presentation nothing more, something they had all done a million times before, the safest thing on earth. And now one of their dwindling number is dead, the greatest one of them all, suddenly and with no goodbyes, and Hermann has had ten years to lose all the walls he built up around himself during the war, and he is ashamed to find himself crying.

No one comes to talk to him. He can't blame them, they're probably all in shock as well, and if he was forgettable ten years ago at the Shatterdome, he is even more forgettable here. It has been difficult to connect with the new recruits anyway, for the simple reason that he was there when the world almost ended and they weren't. It hasn't really bothered him until now.

Anyway, he doesn't want to talk to any of them. There's only one person he wants to talk to.

This realisation is almost as bad as the realisation of Mako's death, though in a different way. Hermann has been trying to not want to talk to Newt, for the simple reason that Newt doesn't seem to want to talk to him, but surely some things transcend an inexplicable and increasing distance between once-close friends.

Hermann gets out his phone to ring Newton, then stops. He has never been the sort who can reach out for help, a habit born from childhood experience where asking for help meant you got slapped down and rejected. And a small part of him is deathly terrified of annoying Newton even more than he already has and driving him away even further. Newton barely speaks to him now, but if he never talked to Hermann again – well, Hermann isn't sure he could bear that.

Plus he's annoyed too. He'd swallowed it down as best he could when Newt visited, but frankly that swanky _suit,_ and that _grovelling_ to the boss – two things the old Newton would have _hated_ – and his outright dismissive attitude – and all right, Newton has never been the most empathetic of men, always interested in his own endeavours more than anyone else’s, but Hermann was sure Kaiju blood rockets would have fascinated him just a little bit. Is he so out of touch with Newton – with the world – that he got it all wrong? Maybe he's getting too old, too out of sync with modern life. Maybe Newton and everyone else is just leaving him behind, like a fossil left on a beach.

Hermann looks down at his phone, then pockets it again.

He feels like a sulky schoolboy, and is furious with himself for feeling that way.

 

Hermann spends the rest of the day avoiding company, and goes to bed early instead of going to dinner in the mess hall and facing all those searching and sympathetic looks. Sleep doesn't come easy though, it hardly ever does since the Drift and the end of the war. And the nightmares are always waiting.

He's dozing, barely conscious, when his tablet makes a _ping_ sound that it hasn't made in a very long time. In years maybe.

He reaches over to the desk and checks his notifications. It's the old online chat between himself and the rest of the Shatterdome survivors – Tendo, Herc Hansen, Newton, Raleigh and – well, what used to be – Mako. No one has spoken on this chat for years. And yet Tendo has written a message:

 

_Choi: '_ _It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.' Mako did not just begin to live, but she lived long and strong and well. My dearest condolences, Raleigh, my brother._

 

Tendo posts a photo of Mako underneath, one taken just after the war, when she had the blue highlights in her hair. She's smiling to someone off camera but Hermann can tell by the sheer joy in her smile that she's smiling at Raleigh.

While he's still absorbing the photo, there is another message, and then another:

 

_Hansen: We have lost one of our best. Death always takes the best before their time. If you need to talk Becket – you know where I am, and you know that I will understand._

_Becket: Thank you both. I have no words for what I have lost._

 

Hermann is aware that he should say something, but he has never been good at phrasing his feelings correctly. Instead he goes for short and sweet:

 

_Gottlieb: My condolences, Mr Becket, her loss is profoundly felt by all of us here._

_Becket: Thanks Hermann, your support means a lot. How is it at the new PPDC?_

_Choi: Yeah Hermann, are they a nightmare??_

 

Hermann snorts without meaning to.

 

_Gottlieb: It is not like the old days, but the recruits are eager and are trying their best to understand. But they have not been in combat and it shows._

_Hansen: Let's hope they never have to be._

_Choi: Agreed. But I bet Newt hates the lot of them!_

 

Hermann frowns at the screen. He has been so caught up in Newton's life that it never occurred to him that others in their little team might not know what has happened to him since. It is sweet and more than a little sad that they simply expected him to still be working with Hermann.

 

_Gottlieb: Dr Geiszler moved to work at Shao Industries about a year after the war. I saw him yesterday at a presentation here before the one in Sydney. He appears to be well._

_Hansen: Shao Industries? That jumped up bunch of idiots?_

_Choi: Selling himself to a private company? Doesn't sound like the Newt I know! Why the hell is he there??_

_Gottlieb: He seems to have met with great success._

_Choi: Yeah brother, you mean he sold his principles for money!_

_Becket: Tendo, remember Newt is actually also on this chat..._

_Choi: I don't see him logging on to talk to us though, do you?_

_Becket: It doesn't matter. I'm glad I heard from you guys. It feels good to remember there's still some of us left who remember what it's like. And who remember the great things Mako did._

_Gottlieb: I assure you, Mr Becket, none of us will ever forget._

 

Hermann puts the tablet back on the table, sleepy at last, his nerves a little less rattled than they were before. It has been a bad day – it has been a terrible day – but he does still have friends. He closes his eyes, ready for sleep, when his phone rings. Groggily and without checking who it is, he answers it, half thinking it is probably one of the lab staff working late and wanting to annoy him with some idiot question.

Instead, Newton's voice says, “Hi, it's me.”

Hermann sits bolt upright, so hard that he almost jars his bad leg. “Newton?”

“Yeah.” Newton sounds distant and almost flustered, taking deep breaths on the other end of the phone. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, no.” Hermann finds himself self consciously combing through his hair with his fingers in an effort to look presentable, even though Newton can't see him. “Where are you? You're not in Sydney are you?”

Newton huffs. “Nah, I stayed home, only the boss got to go. She's fine though, worst luck. I – I kinda wish I'd been there.”

Hermann grips the phone with both hands for no reason at all. “Newton, there was nothing you could do.”

“Yeah.” Newton takes a few more strange, deep breaths. “Yeah, no. I know. I was thinking.”

There is a short silence, and Hermann is suddenly irrationally worried Newton is going to hang up on him and never talk to him again. “Thinking?” he prompts, as gently as possible.

Newton takes a breath. “About Mako. I was remembering. Hey – Herm – do you remember there was this time when she was a bit younger? I can't remember where we were based, might have been Anchorage. She came in the lab to ask for your help, said the PPDC had screwed up her taxes. Do you remember that?”

Hermann frowns. It rings a faint bell, but he can't imagine why Newton would attach so much importance to this simple memory. “Vaguely,” he answers.

“You were really busy with something,” Newton says, and for a moment the nervous fluster is gone, he is almost chattering away like he used to. “Some kind of equation for better mobility of the Jaegar's arms or some rubbish, I don't know. You were in full flow when she came to ask you, and usually nothing stops you then, you don't pay attention to anything, trust me, I _know_ , but you stopped for her.” He laughs a bit. “And then she got embarrassed and said she felt like you were too great a mathematician to be working on her silly taxes, but you wouldn't let her leave, you got off the ladder and sat down with her and the paperwork and you worked it all out. Took you only five minutes of course, but still. The end of the world and you stop to help someone with their taxes. I thought that was really nice of you.”

Hermann swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. He has never done very well with receiving compliments. “Well. I mean. I liked Mako.”

“Yeah.” Newton sounds a bit strangled, and hastily clears his throat. “Yeah, me too. I really liked her Hermann. It's not – it doesn't feel right. What happened to her. It doesn't feel real. I feel like I didn't really see it happen.”

“I know,” Hermann says, sitting back against the wall and closing his eyes. It is so soothing just to hear Newton's voice again – he can't help it, it is. “I know what you mean.”

There's a small pause, then Newton says in a tight voice, “What do you think Raleigh's feeling? I mean, they Drifted didn't they? So they were as close as you can get. What do you think the drift partner feels when one of them dies?”

“I don't – ” starts Hermann, then imagines Newton dying – actually dying – not just never speaking to Hermann again, but really, honestly dying, and the imagined pain seizes all his joints for a hot, desperate, panicky second. When he can speak again, he says, “Pain. A lot of pain,” and his voice is hoarse.

Newton's voice is rough too when he says, “Yeah. You're right.”

There's a dead silence down the phone. Hermann scrounges up a shred of humour from somewhere – anything to stop thinking about Newton dying. “Did you just say I was right about something?”

Newton huffs out a laugh, the sort of laugh you make when you don't really want to laugh. “Occasionally,” he says. “Rarely. Once in a blue moon, kind of thing. Once in a decade. Maybe once every two decades.”

Hermann smiles down the phone, tired and hardly wanting to speak. He wishes Newton would tell another story about the past, share another anecdote about the war, but Newton suddenly mumbles something to himself, vague and unclear, and says, abruptly flustered and distant again, “I've got to go. Just – take care of yourself Hermann, yeah?”

Hermann nods, though Newton can't see it. “Of course,” he says. “And you, Newton. And you.”

Newton disconnects the call. A few minutes later, the tablet lets out another _ping_ with a single new message:

 

_Geiszler: Raleigh, I'm very sorry to hear about what happened to Mako. She was one in a million and I will miss her dearly. Like I miss you all – Raleigh – Tendo – Herc – Hermann. I hope more than anything to see you all soon x_

 

When Hermann looks at the chat the next day, Newton has removed himself from it.

 


End file.
